Esther Dyson Quotes

The thing is, if I ever found a guy I could fall in love with, I'd want to marry him and have his children. And that scares me to death because I think I'm a whole bunch of crazy, and I always worry that a guy will walk away once he really, truly knows me.

Being married and having a child was not something I wanted, and I knew that at a very young age. I tend to be more solitary, and I'm truly a free spirit.

Nobody's just arrogant. I've met people who are embattled and dismissive, but when you get to know them, you find that they're vulnerable - that that hauteur or standoffishiness is because they're pedaling furiously underneath.

I was very unique as a child, dressed a certain way, acted a certain way, didn't fit in with everybody. So I immediately got picked on, especially around the age of 12 and 13, when you start going to junior high and start mingling with the older kids. To counteract that, strictly for self-defense, I wanted to get bigger.

When you're an insecure teenager, you build walls and defenses and masks, and those are incredibly satisfying to perform and chip away at. I mean, when I was an insecure teenager, you'd have had no idea what I was insecure about because I hid it so well. Only confident people are comfortable wearing their vulnerabilities on their sleeve.

A lawyer I once knew told me of a strange case, a suffragette who had never married. After her death, he opened her trunk and discovered 50 wedding gowns.

My family was all police and hard hats at the refineries; they didn't know what to think about me. So I became a closet writer.

It's so much easier for me to get up and be someone else than expressing my own thoughts and feelings. There's definitely something about creating a cloak of a character that helped me deal with my shyness.

As a kid, I would push my shoulders forward in order to hide my heart from being hurt.

I sort of enjoy the fact that I'm misunderstood most of the time. That's fine.

I cannot help feeling I would have been happier with a husband and chidren of my own.

Why should I? No one would wish to hurt me.

I moved around so much when I was younger that I sort of had to have this type of exterior; you know, I was afraid of getting hurt.

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.

I'm very shy. I wish more people believed me when I say that.

I have to admit, I was a little bit of a misfit.

I've always felt like an outsider as a woman. I've never really felt wholly comfortable in a women's world or woman's things. I've never been conventionally pretty or thin or girly-girl. Never felt dateable. All I've seen on TV has never felt like mine.

You can't allow yourself to be vulnerable.

I always felt like reality was a bizarre place, and everybody was really good at being normal, and I didn't know how to do it.

I am enormously uncool. I've made a cottage industry of being uncool. And I'm fine with that.

It is just that I don't want a wife and I don't want kids.

I think, as human beings, we try to hide our flaws and try to present this perfect person, this person we wish we were, to our spouse when that causes so many troubles.

I'm afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I'm afraid they'll mock me, think I'm ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I'm used to not being taken seriously, but only the 'light-hearted' Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the 'deeper' Anne is too weak.

I love people, but I don't do so well in a system. We're poor, and we lead a very different kind of life. We depend on other people so much.

I wish I had some strapping football player husband. It would be such a dream to be 'normal' like that, but I'm just not.